Katherine Huff O'Neil

Katherine Huff O’Neil was born September 10, 1938 in New Orleans into an old, established southern family. Her parents, Leona Spaht Huff and Daniel William Huff, owned a prominent local trucking company. Katherine and her brother Daniel enjoyed an interesting childhood in an exotic multicultural port city. They spent many hours on the Mississippi River docks watching rough-and-ready crews unload bananas and other cargo from ships that had come from around the world or walking in the French Quarter, then a family residential area, or taking the streetcar (then seven cents) to Audubon Park. “Our parents would have been horrified had they known where we were,” Katherine says, “but we were just dumb kids and fascinated by New Orleans.” That spirit of fearlessness, curiosity, and optimism have stood Katherine in good stead and made her a heroine in the fight to help even the playing field for women and minorities in the legal profession.

After graduating from Miss McGehee’s, a private girls’ school in New Orleans, Katherine attended Stanford University, graduating summa cum laude and Phi Beta Kappa with a degree in political science. She went on to attend Harvard Law School, where her classmates included Patricia Schroeder, Janet Reno, and Elizabeth Dole. Before completing her law studies, she married Harvard Law student Michael Duane O’Neil, a native of Dayton, Washington, and moved to Tigard, where for a dozen years she devoted her energies to raising sons Patrick William and Charles Peter, working for Calvin Presbyterian in Tigard as an elder and Clerk of Session, being a correspondent for the Oregonian, and being active in the community.

In 1974, when her sons were in junior high school, she returned to law school, earning her law degree with honors from the Northwestern School of Law at Lewis & Clark College in Portland. Following graduation and a divorce, she worked as a civil litigator and appellate specialist in three major Portland law firms before starting Graff & O’Neil with her husband, John Paul “Toby” Graff.

Katherine’s greatest gift to women in her profession is Oregon Women Lawyers, a statewide organization she helped found and then guided as its first president. Fellow female lawyers later honored her for “giving the group instant credibility, both because of the dignity she brought to the job and because of her standing in the community.” They also noted that Katherine “has been willing to risk making people in power uncomfortable, and she has done it with style and grace. She has been willing to put her reputation on the line.” Some years later Katherine helped found the Oregon Women Lawyers Foundation and served on its board.

While working tirelessly to give women and minority lawyers a place at the table, Katherine devoted endless hours of service within the established legal community, including serving as the first woman president of the Professional Liability Fund and chair of the Oregon Law Foundation, both part of the Oregon State Bar Association; being elected by Oregon State Bar members as a delegate to the American Bar Association House of Delegates (and later head of the Oregon delegation); receiving a presidential appointment to the ABA Commission on Women in the Profession; and serving as president of the National Conference of Women’s Bar Associations. She also served on the Federal District Court of Oregon Gender Bias Task Force and the Chief Justice’s Committee on Gender Bias in the Oregon Courts. Her community activities include service on the boards of Chamber Music Northwest and Concerned Coastal Citizens of the Long Beach Peninsula.

When the Oregon Commission for Women honored Katherine with its 1999 “Women of Achievement” award, one of those who nominated her said, “Due to her activities, Katherine is the most widely known of any female non-judicial member of the Oregon State Bar Association.”

One of Katherine’s great strengths is her belief in the magic of networking—especially for those who aren’t already part of an “old boy network.” She has a remarkable ability to remember the talents of the many individuals she meets and never misses an opportunity to bring people together for their mutual benefit. Nor does she ever believe that any goal is unattainable. As one colleague remarked at an Oregon Women Lawyers dinner honoring her achievements, “In some ways Katherine is still the little girl who says, ‘Oh, look—there’s a barn…let’s put on a show!”